I'm ditching Facebook.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

Confession time: I have never really liked Facebook. I have a lot of the same complaints about its format and the way it skews communication that I did about Tumblr, and it has been no secret for years that data gleaned from people's activity is mined for third parties to try and sell them products, and Facebook algorithyms curate people's feeds to this end. But this newest crap with Cambridge Analytica is really the straw that broke the camel's back.

What I really need to do is blog here, which I said I was going to try and do more often.

In other news: yes, X Files is back and has been for a few months. No, I have not been watching it (yet) for two reasons: one, the way it contributed to conspiracy theory culture bothers me as much as it did when I blogged about it last year. I feel like it gave a lot of validation to people who are now devotees of Breitbart and Infowars - and everything Chris Carter has said indicates that he really believes he is "shaking up the sheeple."

Two, I binge-watched the entire run of Twin Peaks, much of which I had not seen since its original run in 1990-1991, along with the new third season, which ran on Showtime this past summer. And having done so, I now see how much X Files was influenced by it, almost to the point of it being a straight lift of some aspects of it - like it was created to fill the void Twin Peaks left when it went off the air.

And now I wish we had gotten a spinoff about the Blue Rose division of the FBI - David Lynch's idea of a FBI task force that investigates paranormal occurences. Except one could kind of say that season 3 *was* the Blue Rose spinoff.

I am sure I will check out the new episodes of X Files at some point.

Comments

[mirrorofsmoke]

Hey. :D We're part of the Facebook Hate Brigade. :P

[numb3r_5ev3n]

My skills as such are rudimentary at best, but now I want to design a bunch of WWII era-type propaganda posters to the tune of, "Don't PUTIN your data in a place where it might be compromised by the enemy! #DeleteFacebook TODAY!"

[sabotabby]

I wish I could ditch Facebook but I need more of a network elsewhere. Fuck, I miss the good old days of LJ.

I have been tempted to watch the X-Files just for the trainwreck appeal, but I read the summary of the last episode and it sounded so bad that my head might explode.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

Fuck, I miss the good old days of LJ.

So do I. It's funny...when I first got into Facebook and Tumblr back in 2009-2010, it was like a break from how toxic I felt LJ was becoming, and all the drama from Strikethrough/Boldthrough/etc. But LJ was never as bad as either of those places have become, except that it is now owned by a hostile superpower.

With Facebook, there was also the thrill of catching up with old friends from past fandoms I had been involved with on web forums and Google Groups and Yahoo Groups - some of whom I hadn't interacted with for years, and who I was just seeing actual photos of for the first time.

I am going to just deactivate my account and leave messenger up for a while so that they can contact me for my email address or my Reddit handle or Discord handle or whatever.

And yeah, the reviews of this new season of the X Files have been pretty awful. They make it sound like Chris Carter is leaping up on a soapbox and is doing his best Alex Jones impression. Ugh, no thanks.

[lb_lee]

I've been living under a rock. What's the Cambridge Analytica stuff going down?

EDIT: Never mind, read the Guardian article. Whooooaaaa that's unsettling. Not exactly surprising at all, but eesh.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

And since that article was printed, the Mercers and Nix have already started a new company, Emerdata, so they can do it all again once Cambridge analytica goes down.

https://www.metro.us/news/the-big-stories/cambridge-analytica-backers-new-data-company-emerdata